Arrowhead Game Studio’s Helldivers 2 is one of my all-time favourite co-op games of all time, despite its tendency to be extremely buggy. One of the biggest issues with the live-service multiplayer game, however, isn’t really the game’s often-funny glitches, but its massive install size.

On PS5 and Xbox Series, Helldivers 2 actually comes in at a respectable 40GB after a year of major updates. (Originally, the game was closer to 25GB on launch!) However, on PC, the game has ballooned in size with a massive install of 140GB for the exact same quality game.

In recent months, fans discovered the exact reason for this higher install size: asset duplication. On PC, likely to support old mechanical hard drives, Helldivers 2 duplicates assets numerous times to lower seek times and keep HDDs in the fight. However, with the large majority of PC gamers using SSDs, this massive install size has become an issue.

Following complaints, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has responded to fans on the official Helldivers Discord server, and the studio is looking into the problem. Unfortunately, the CEO doesn’t know when the team will be able to reduce the game’s size.

“We have escalated the priority of this. But I can’t tell you when it will be addressed,” Jorjani told fans on the Discord server.

Helldivers 2 wouldn’t be the only game to see such a drastic reduction in file size. Just a few days ago, a major update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 saw the game make a huge 100GB reduction in install size on PS5, allowing players to install a second game on their console.

Arrowhead’s initiative to reduce the file size of Helldivers 2 might have a singular downside: mechanical hard drive users may be left in the dust. However, with the price of even slower SATA SSDs now being rather affordable, it should hinder the majority of PC gamers.

The huge filesize of Helldivers 2 isn’t the only issue facing the game as of yet with performance still in a rocky state. In the same Discord conversation, Jorjani also discussed the game’s unstable performance, especially on PC, explaining that the team are also unhappy with the way the game runs at the time of writing.

“We want the quality of performance and stability to be better with each release. We don’t give ourselves a passing grade right now,” Jorjani told fans. “It’s very hard now to get quick fixes/improvements to bear.”

“I’m telling you we’re not getting a passing grade on performance and stability,” he continued. “I hope that’s clear. a big project like this is complex – it’s not either performance or content- we have to be able to do both which has been the challenge. Every time we realize something isn’t working we make changes internally. we change who’s in charge, how decisions are made, processes, planning. And then we see if it bears fruit. That takes time. Some of the things we released now were developed many months ago.”

Helldivers 2 recently released its massive Into the Unjust expansion, a massive update that allows players to go inside the hives created by Termanids. Right now, the game is remarkably buggy—pun not intended—but the core gameplay experience is still extremely fun.